{"id":136922,"date":"2023-09-07T11:58:11","date_gmt":"2023-09-07T18:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=136922"},"modified":"2023-09-07T11:58:11","modified_gmt":"2023-09-07T18:58:11","slug":"electing-an-assassin-in-chief-22-years-of-drone-warfare-and-unavoidable-collateral-damage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2023\/09\/07\/electing-an-assassin-in-chief-22-years-of-drone-warfare-and-unavoidable-collateral-damage\/","title":{"rendered":"Electing an Assassin in Chief: 22 Years of Drone Warfare and “Unavoidable Collateral Damage”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr.\u00a0Maha\u00a0Hilal<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

In a June 2012 piece headlined<\/a> Praying at the Church of St. Drone,\u201d I wrote, Be assured of one thing: whichever candidate you choose at the polls in November, you aren\u2019t just electing a president of the United States; you are also electing an assassin-in-chief.\u201d At that time, President Barack Obama was overseeing what came to be known as<\/a> terror Tuesday\u201d weekly meetings in the White House Situation Room with more than 100 national security types, some by secure video teleconference,\u201d gathering to discuss global assassination targets in America\u2019s never-ending war on terror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike once upon a time, however, the assassins\u201d to be dispatched were no longer human, but unmanned aerial aircraft,\u201d or drones. And they struck across significant parts of the planet, sometimes killing al-Qaeda figures, but all too often, civilians<\/a> and even children<\/a>. Drone operators were, in fact, allowed to kill based on nothing more than what was called patterns of suspicious behavior<\/a>\u201d and their planes were<\/a> roughly thirty times more likely to result in a civilian fatality than an airstrike by a manned aircraft.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I wrote then:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the [New York<\/em>] Times<\/em> telling, the organization of robotic killing had become the administration\u2019s id\u00e9e fixe, <\/em>a kind of cult of death within the Oval Office, with those involved in it being so many religious devotees. Of course, thought about another way, that \u2018terror Tuesday\u2019 scene might not be from a monastery or a church synod, but from a Mafia council directly out of a Mario Puzo novel, with the president as the Godfather, designating \u2018hits\u2019 in a rough-and-tumble world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How far we\u2019ve come in just two presidencies!  Assassination as a way of life has been institutionalized in the Oval Office, thoroughly normalized, and is now being offered to the rest of us as a reasonable solution to American global problems and an issue on which to run a presidential campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, foreign assassination attempts were hardly unknown in previous American history, but they were usually left to<\/a> the CIA<\/a> and there was nothing machine-like about them. In this century, it\u2019s been different indeed, whether the targets were unknown figures considered suspicious (from an automated distance) or, as in the case of Donald Trump, whose administration upped<\/a> such strikes, all too well known, as with the drone assassination<\/a> of Major General Qassem Suleimani, the leader of Iran\u2019s elite Quds Force, on his arrival at Baghdad International Airport on a visit to Iraq.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Maha Hilal, author of Innocent Until Proven Muslim: Islamophobia, the War on Terror, and the Muslim Experience Since 9\/11<\/em><\/a>, reports today, President Biden has, after a fashion, reined in<\/a> the Trumpian version of drone assassination, but he, like the three presidents before him, still remains America\u2019s assassin-in-chief.  With that in mind, consider what such a world looks like to those potentially on the other side of a drone\u2019s missiles. Tom<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

22 Years of Drone Warfare and No End in Sight<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden’s Rules on Drone Warfare Mask Continued Violent Islamophobia<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Maha Hilal<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I no longer love blue skies. In fact, I now prefer gray skies. The drones do not fly when the skies are gray.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s what a young Pakistani boy named Zubair told<\/a> members of Congress at a hearing on drones in October 2013. That hearing was during the Obama years at a time when the government had barely even acknowledged<\/a> that an American drone warfare program existed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two years earlier, however, a Muslim cleric, Anwar Al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman, both American citizens, were killed by U.S. drone strikes in Yemen just weeks apart. Asked to comment on Abdulrahman\u2019s killing, Obama campaign senior adviser Robert Gibbs said<\/a>: I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well-being of their children. I don\u2019t think becoming an al-Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those are two of all too many grim tales of the brutality with which the United States has carried out its drone warfare program. Post-9\/11 reiterations by the government of the danger we now live in (because the U.S. was attacked), have made the collective responsibility of Muslims and the callous dismissal of their deaths a regular occurrence.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2023, this country\u2019s drone warfare program has entered its third decade with no end in sight. Despite the fact that the 22nd anniversary of 9\/11 is approaching, policymakers have demonstrated no evidence of reflecting on the failures of drone warfare and how to stop it. Instead, the focus continues to be on simply shifting drone policy in minor ways within an ongoing violent system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Inherent Dehumanization of Drone Warfare<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In February 2013, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney justified<\/a> drone strikes as a key tool of American foreign policy this way:  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have acknowledged, the United States, that sometimes we use remotely piloted aircraft to conduct targeted strikes against specific al-Qaeda terrorists in order to prevent attacks on the United States and to save American lives. We conduct those strikes because they are necessary to mitigate ongoing actual threats, to stop plots, prevent future attacks, and, again, save American lives\u2026 The U.S. government takes great care in deciding to pursue an al-Qaeda terrorist, to ensure precision and to avoid loss of innocent life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More aggressively endorsing the use of such drones, Georgetown Professor Daniel Byman<\/a>, who has held government positions, emphasized the necessity of such warfare<\/a> to protect American lives. Drones,\u201d he wrote, have done their job remarkably well\u2026 And they have done so at little financial cost, at no risk to U.S. forces, and with fewer civilian casualties than many alternative methods would have caused.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In reality, however, Washington\u2019s war on terror has inflicted disproportionate violence on communities across the globe, while using this form of asymmetrical warfare to further expand the space between the value placed on American lives and those of Muslims. As the rhetoric on drone warfare suggests, the value of life and the need to protect it are, as far as Washington is concerned, reserved for Americans and their allies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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22 Years of Drone Warfare and No End in Sight<\/a><\/blockquote>